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The Paul Hamlyn Library

It is with great regret that
the British Museum will close the Paul Hamlyn Library as part of
efforts to accommodate a 15% cut to the Museum’s grant-in-aid
budget. The Centre for Anthropology library remains open to all
visitors to the Museum.

The curatorial department libraries
(Ancient Egypt and Sudan, Asia, Coins and Medals, Greece and Rome,
Middle East, Britain, Europe and Prehistory, Prints and Drawings),
may be accessed, by appointment, for research enquiries. The Museum
is looking into how the books that were housed in the Paul Hamlyn
Library can best be managed so that they continue to be used for
the maximum benefit of the Museum.

Family backpacks and trails which
were previously distributed through the library will be available
from the Great Court.

Background

The Paul Hamlyn Library was set up
as a reference library in 2000. From 2007, the resources of another
one of the Museum’s ten libraries, the Central Library started to
be made available through the Paul Hamlyn Library. The holdings of
the Central Library include books on the history of the Museum, a
small number of the Museum’s rare books, and a collection of rare
books from the House of Commons. In order to avoid confusion, from
2007 we began to refer to the joint collection as the Paul Hamlyn
Library.

The resulting joint collection, the
Paul Hamlyn Library, Central Library, and House of Commons
collection, contains 50,000 books and journals. The subject matter
is very wide-ranging, including archaeology, history, art,
numismatics, Egyptology, Classical antiquities, oriental art and
museum studies and covers the range of cultures and types of
collection covered by the British Museum. There is a collection of
works relating to the history of the British Museum, including
guidebooks dating back to 1762. The library also holds a copy of
every British Museum publication and there is a collection of
ephemera relating to past exhibitions, including a poster
archive.

The Museum has undertaken a 90-day
consultation with the eleven affected staff. This is the standard
legal consultation on the impact of the proposed closure on their
personal circumstances. All redundancies were agreed on voluntary
terms and a number of staff have been redeployed to other roles in
the Museum.

When it was set up in 2000, the
Paul Hamlyn Library collection was accessed by the public from the
Reading Room. This changed in 2007, when the Reading Room was used
for special exhibitions. The Reading Room will continue to be used
for special exhibitions until the new World Conservation and
Exhibitions Centre opens in 2014. In the lead-up to the opening, we
will be consulting widely about the future use of the Reading
Room.